UMW Intern Adventures

UMW Intern Adventures

2022 Interns

First Post

I found my internship through using our Handshake, a job and internship platform that the UMW Career Center provides to students and alumni. After I learned more about the organization and its dedication to low-economic neighborhoods in the Richmond area, and its purpose to provide extra help and resources to those kids, I knew how important it would be to be a part of a child’s relationship with the school. One of the key parts of my internship is working in small groups with the children in reading and math. I learned to create lesson plans designed to the children’s needs. When creating my first lesson plan, it was hard because I had not yet met some of the students and was not sure what topics they were struggling with…

Second Post

Interning at the Youth Life Foundation of Richmond (YLFR) has brought up numerous topics that I have learned about previously as a psychology major. For example, one of the topics we discussed in one of my development classes was how learning can be different for each individual child. 
The kids that I have been working with are from the ages of 6-10 years old, which encompasses middle to late childhood. These students are actually bilingual in Spanish and English, or are learning to speak English. Since most of them live with parents that speak do not speak English, it’s hard for them in the school system. In their school, there are no bilingual teachers or anyone to translate the information to these students…

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First Post

I have always been interested in history. From a young age, I loved reading and learning about the cultures of the past, but I didn’t know how I could best apply this in the form of a career. Usually, whenever I told someone I was a history major, they would ask me whether I wanted to be a history teacher or not, which led me to think for a while that the only thing that could be done with a history degree is teaching. I never liked the idea of standing in front of a group of people and presenting in school, and frankly, the idea of doing the same thing for the rest of my life terrified me. Because of that, I wasn’t sure for a while if I even wanted to remain a history major, so I started researching different careers and I came across archive work. It seemed reasonably quiet, and I would…

Second Post

I have already talked about how I found the opportunity for my internship at the Yarmouth History Center, so now I’d like to share how I found the grant opportunity. At first, I was not sure where to look. I had checked several places on campus where I thought it would be (both on the campus website and in person), but I was not finding anything that looked like it could help me specifically.
For a while, I was not even sure if I would be working at the Yarmouth History Center as an intern–the director of the History Center was very understanding and said I could work as a volunteer for the summer…

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First Post

I knew I would have to do an internship for my degree program, but I had no clue what I wanted to do and where to find opportunities. Throughout this past spring semester, I applied for numerous internships on Handshake, a site similar to LinkedIn. Handshake is a great career site because employers are on the site to exclusively hire college students for jobs and internships. Handshake lets you post your classes, extracurriculars, projects, skills, and even a copy of your resume for employers to see. It also allows you to apply for these job and internships right through the site…

Second Post

One of the many reasons I wanted to do an internship was to experience a different work environment. I’ve worked as a hairstylist since I was seventeen years old. It’s the only job experience I’ve had, and I wanted to experience the complete opposite of the service industry…

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This summer finds me interning at Diva Crows, a small songbird rehabilitation organization located in Alexandria, Virginia. I’m going to use this post to share a typical day for me as an intern with this organization.
My day usually starts at around 11 AM, though sometimes I come in earlier to help when there is no one available in the early morning to feed the babies…birds that is! There is always one other intern there with me in the morning, and we begin by cleaning all of the cages and feeding any hatchlings, nestlings, or juveniles that we have in the bird room currently. We use doggy pee pads in all of our cages so they’re pretty quick and easy to change out. Once all of that is done we start with feeding…

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First Post

My internship is working on the campaign for Abigail Spanberger’s reelection to Congress in 2022. Being a political science major, I wanted to find an internship in which I would engage in politics and meet politicians. This particular internship was mentioned by one of my professors and I jumped on the opportunity to apply for a position that was not only close to the University of Mary Washington and home, but it was also for a local female politician. Once I knew I was accepted into the internship I was ecstatic knowing that I would be working and helping with a campaign. Within my first two weeks, I was able to meet Abigail at an office opening party and I knew from that moment that I had made the right decision to intern for this campaign. She is a coalition builder, she is qualified, she is willingly to work nonpartisan to accomplish important tasks and she is a “regular person” who is there for her constituents…

Second Post

While interning at the Fredericksburg field office for Congress member Abigail Spanberger, I have learned that there is never a dull moment! Most days when I head into the office, I leave my home around 11:30am to arrive at noon. Once I get there, we have our daily meeting to discuss our goals for the day, what everyone’s tasks are, any upcoming events that we can attend or help run, and conversations that we are having with voters. As I write this post, we are in the persuasion stage of the campaign where we are talking with voters that are either independents, undecided, or have voted for both parties throughout their years of voting. These voters are extremely important to reach because they can lean either way and can determine whether or not Abigail keeps her seat in Congress…

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First Post

My internship journey so far has been chock-full of irreplicable experiences. While I was originally supposed to work with a different museum, due to many reasons they are no longer hosting their internship program for this summer. However, the James Monroe Museum has kindly taken me under their wing and let me explore so many opportunities that I never would have been able to otherwise.
My supervisor, Lindsey Crawford, has allowed me to explore my interests in Indigenous Studies in the museum field. I have been able to plan the Native American History Month’s content for this year, which has been exciting and challenging…

Second Post

Interning with the James Monroe Museum has been wonderful; they have helped me learns so much about a potential career in museums. In the time since I wrote my first blog post, I was included in talks with the director of the James Monroe Museum, the James Farmer Multicultural Center, and the guest speaker we are planning on hosting for Native American History Month. The conversations that we had during the planning process were extremely enlightening. For example, part of the discussion touched upon needing to be aware of how sensitive the content we are planning on highlighting can be. This in turn lent itself to including the Talley Center in this program to ensure that there would be a safe space for people to discuss how the content has impacted them…

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First Post

This summer I am working as the play-by-play broadcast intern for the Lexington County Blowfish of the Coastal Plain League (CPL). The Coastal Plain League is a summer baseball league for premier college players to gain experience in the grind of everyday baseball while honing their skills and attempting to draw the attention of scouts for future contracts. Leagues like this one are all over the country, with varying degrees of size and talent level, but the CPL is located primarily in the Carolinas and is one of the top 2-3 leagues in the nation.
While I’ve been around baseball as a player or coach since I was about five years old, this was my first summer stepping away from the ballfield and into the front office. It was also my first endeavor into baseball broadcasting. While I do the play-by-play for fall and winter sports at Mary Washington, being a member of the UMW Baseball team prevents and excludes me from calling my own games…

Second Post

As July wrapped up, my time with the Lexington County Blowfish officially came to a close. From broadcasting to sales training to guest playing on the actual roster, it feels like I’ve done just about everything this summer. I’d like to use this blog post to look back at how exactly I came to find myself two states and seven hours away from Fredericksburg, working in a front office that had never once heard of Mary Washington, the school or the person…

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First Post

I am an intern for not one but two organizations this summer!
My first internship is as a Marketing Intern at All In Solutions in May. AIS is a veteran and woman-owned small business specializing in advancing clients’ business objectives and fueling innovation quickly and accurately through managed services, IT solutions, and strategic initiatives.
As their Marketing Intern, I am in charge of three projects this summer: to design a new business card, revamp the company’s presence on social media platforms, and redesign the website. I started work on the new business cards since AIS had several new employees starting in June. I love working on graphic design projects, and this one was no different. I was able…

Second Post

“A Day in the Life” of a marketing intern, over two days since I was extra and took on two internships.
Friday: All In Solutions, Marketing Intern
8:00: (This is in the a.m., in case you were wondering). I wake up and spend fifteen minutes playing snooze tag. As this is a virtual internship, I can spend the time I would be commuting, contemplating life from my bed.
9:00: I get on my work laptop with my coffee in hand…

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First Post

Having the opportunity to be a Garden Education Intern with Downtown Greens here in the city of Fredericksburg has been a gift. The intern position for me has revolved around assisting with the Downtown Greens’ summer camps as well as assisting with their Youth Farm Program. At this point, I have had the chance to learn, play, and teach alongside different children, and garden educators…

Second Post

Looking back, after having completed my internship with Downtown Greens as a Garden Education intern, the opportunity was one I could not have missed.
In the spring semester of 2022, I took an anthropology course with Professor Mentore here at UMW which was centered around the topic of the Age of the Anthropocene. A large portion of the course was focused on Permaculture design principles, which can be explained more simply as strategic sustainable agriculture designs. Professor Mentore had the class take a trip to Downtown Greens and analyze the locations and existence of water sources, wind patterns, human pathways, sun patterns, etc. I fell in love with the greenspace at Downtown Greens and knew I wanted to be more involved with the organization. I followed them on Instagram and learned that they were taking applications for various internship positions. I then applied to the Garden Education intern position due to my experience of working with children. From there, the rest is history…

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First Post

This summer, I’ve had the pleasure of working as an intern at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Virginia. I first learned about this position on Handshake, as I was desperately searching for an internship that related to my environmental science degree and would give me useful skills for my future career, and this internship seemed almost too good to be true. Thankfully, I didn’t hit my head and dream it up and I’ve been enjoying my time at Huntley Meadows ever since…

Second Post

When I began my internship at the start of the summer, I didn’t know what a typical day would look like while working at Huntley Meadows Park. Excitingly enough for me, there was no “typical day” in terms of the work we were doing at the park. Some days involved smaller tasks, like trail maintenance, spraying herbicide on invasive, or setting up exclusion fencing to prevent beavers and Canadian geese from destroying important native plant species. On other days I was doing something completely new, like going to a different Fairfax County Park and hand pulling water chestnuts (an invasive plant species in Virginia) in a lake while balanced precariously in a kayak…

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First Post

This summer, I’m interning at the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The food bank is committed to ending hunger and food insecurity in the city of Fredericksburg and surrounding regions. This is my very first internship, and so far it has been more rewarding than I ever imagined it could be.
I have the opportunity to help with this summer’s “Summer Feeding” program. I’m also in charge of distributing “food preference” surveys which allow people to share their food preferences based on ethnic or cultural preferences. These past couple of months at the food bank have been eye-opening, educational, and rewarding…

Second Post

My internship at the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank has continued to be a rewarding experience. More surveys have been collected and more people are being fed each day without the burden of not knowing where there next meal will originate.
I knew I wanted to have an internship this summer doing something related to my major.  After researching places near Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Stafford, I started emailing different homeless shelters, shelters for women experiencing domestic violence, social services, and food banks. I heard back from many who said they already had interns for the summer, didn’t offer any internships, or simply didn’t respond to my many emails…

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First Post

I began my internship with RCASA this spring and will be continuing working with them for the duration of the summer. RCASA is a non-profit organization which works in Fredericksburg and the surrounding areas to provide both direct support to survivors of sexual assault and to support people indirectly impacted by sexual violence, such as friends or family. When I was searching for internships, I knew I wanted to work with an organization somehow related to my major, which is Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies…

Second Post

As a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major, my internship at Rappahannock Council Against Sexual Assault (RCASA) has greatly related to my courses. RCASA provides support services to survivors of sexual violence and their loved ones, as well as educational services to help inform people about the intricacies of sexual violence. These include but are not limited to how to support individuals who have experienced sexual violence, who is impacted by sexual violence, and what societal factors impact sexual violence…

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First Post

Interning abroad was not my first choice. Before the pandemic struck, I dreamed of studying abroad in Spain. I had seen pictures of the Universidad de Deusto, in all its neoclassical glory seated by the sparkling estuary that divides Bilbao neatly in half. My mind conjured images of taking notes in lecture halls with vaulted ceilings, interacting with the quirky yet fashionable student populace, and roaming the nearby city streets…

Second Post

While I didn’t fully realize this previously, over the past few weeks of interning at Happy Erasmus Bilbao, I’ve learned that the fields of diplomacy and tourism overlap quite a bit. While studying UMW, I focused on the political and historical aspects of Hispanic and Asian countries. Before arriving in Bilbao, Spain, I hoped to intern at a company related to the fields of law, foreign affairs, history, or politics. However, I was instead assigned to a student travel agency. Even though I did not see a connection between the internship and my studies, I happily accepted the position. As I worked, I began to realize that my internship was unusually relevant to what I had learned at UMW…

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First Post

I found my internship with The Hoop Group thanks to help from my teammate and my assistant coach of the UMW men’s basketball team. My teammate, Riley, did this internship last year and has mentioned how beneficial it was for him to be at events and begin networking for his desire to start a career in coaching. That had immediately piqued my interest for a potential sports management internship to complete the last part of my sports management minor…

Second Post

The internship I did this summer at The Hoop Group has allowed me to experience a lot of different concepts taught in my classes and brought them to life. The area where I saw the biggest overlap between class concepts and real life experiences was with my class in events and facilities management, which largely described the actions I performed as an operations intern. In this class, I learned about the 5 Cs of event management: Concept, Coordination, Control, Culmination, Closeout…

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The students who are telling their stories here all applied for, and received, internship grants from UMW. For more information on upcoming grant cycles, deadlines, and criteria, please contact the Career Center or give us a call at 540-654-5646, or stop by the Center for Career and Professional Development (UC Suite 206) to make an appointment. For quick and easy questions, feel free to email us at ccpd@umw.edu.